The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy

essays in political philosophy and on Catholic social teaching

Martin Rhonheimer

Publication Year: 2013

The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy offers a rich collection of essays in political philosophy by Swiss philosopher Martin Rhonheimer. Like his other books in both ethical theory and applied ethics, which have recently been published in English, the essays included are distinguished by the philosophical rigor and meticulous attention to the primary and secondary literature of the various topics discussed

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

The title of this book, The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy, contains
a twofold message. First, there is a common good, including a set of socially
shared values, which morally legitimates both the basic political structure of
constitutional democracy...

Introduction

The present volume makes available, for English-language readers, a substantial
collection of essays in political philosophy by the Swiss philosopher Martin
Rhonheimer. In this preface, I will offer first some general introductory remarks
to locate this...

One: Why Is Political Philosophy Necessary?: Historical Considerations and a Response

The question “Why is political philosophy necessary?” could seem
strange and out of place to those familiar with the history of philosophy and
with the present-day “renaissance,” at the international level, of philosophical
reflection...

Two: The Liberal Image of Man and the Concept of Autonomy: Beyond the Debate between Liberals and Communitarians

More than a philosophical theory, today liberalism is a political reality.
Even socialists and social-democrats in Western democracies profess a
liberal political consensus. This consensus has its historical roots in those
same political...

Three: The Democratic Constitutional State and the Common Good

The great majority of people living in today’s so-called developed world
are also participants in a culture characterized by the political-institutional
reality of the democratic constitutional state. This type of political organization
of society...

The Hobbesian maxim Auctoritas non veritas facit legem (“Authority, not
truth creates the law”) certainly has the character of a hackneyed phrase,
a commonplace of political philosophy, but it has the advantage that it not
only brings out the...

Five: The Open Society and the New Laicism: Against the Soft Totalitarianism of Certain Secularist Thinking

Karl Popper wrote in 1987 that, despite the fact that his book The Open Society
and Its Enemies had been continually in print since 1945, only rarely had
the book’s most important idea been well understood: that the essential thing
is not...

Six: The Political and Economic Realities of the Modern World and Their Ethicaland Cultural Presuppositions: The Encyclical Centesimus annus

Centesimus annus,1 the third social encyclical of John Paul II, was published
in 1991 on the occasion of the centenary of Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum.
2 The latter was the first of the social encyclicals of the popes...

Seven: The Political Ethos of Constitutional Democracy and the Place of Natural Law in Public Reason: Rawls’s “Political Liberalism” Revisited

The main concern of this essay, and the principal aim of my argument
that runs through all parts of it, is to answer the question: “How in liberal
constitutional democracy as it actually exists in most free and developed
countries...

Eight: Rawlsian Public Reason, Natural Law, and the Foundation of Justice: A Response to David Crawford

In his article “Recognizing the Roots of Society in the Family, Foundation
of Justice,”1 David Crawford has provided a very valuable account of
human society as founded in the family union, which on its turn is based on
the marriage...

Nine: Can Political Ethics Be Universalized? : Human Rights as a Global Project

Human rights are made up of all the values that concern social and political
life, and are supposed to be universal. Though their origin is Western,
human rights today are to be applied globally. Taken as a global political
ethos, then, they...

Ten: Christian Secularity and the Culture of Human Rights

It is well known that the Catholic Church has come to fully acknowledge
the secularity of the state and the political principles of constitutional democracy
as a cultural achievement only after a long period of mutual hostility
and conflict...

The modern political culture of the democratic constitutional state is
the result of a long process of conflict, from which has arisen the awareness,
typically modern, of the need to distinguish the political and juridical system...

Twelve: Christianity and Secularity: Past and Present of a Complex Relationship

The thesis that I will propose in this essay is the following: Christianity
introduced a clear separation between politics and religion into Western
history, in an absolutely new way and indeed for the first time. At the same
time, however...

In a notable Christmas message given before the Roman Curia on December
22, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI cautioned against a widespread interpretation
of the Second Vatican Council that would posit that the Church after
the council...

Fourteen: Capitalism, Free Market Economy, and the Common Good: The Role of the State in the Economy

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